LaGuardia vs. Moses

This past week I went to Robert Caro's last lecture on "The Shapers of New York" at the New-York Historical Society. This final lecture was about the battle between New York's greatest Mayor and its greatest builder as they wrestled for control of the city's destiny during the Great Depression and World War II. While history has sainted Fiorello LaGuardia's Mayoralty as the one that successfully implemented the New Deal into our city, in the end Robert Moses won the battle as to who would set the city's priorities for literally decades to come.

LaGuardia and Moses were two titanic egomaniacs who literally could not stand the sight of each other. When the Mayor and his Parks Commissioner would be in the same room together, they would pace around each other like two boxers in a ring waiting to the punch the other guy out. They would yell and scream and call the other loathsome names. Moses would call LaGuardia a "dago" and "wop" or, even worse, an "organ grinder." And LaGuardia, the lesser educated and refined but more gentlemanly of the two, would call Moses "your grace."

As I mentioned in my first post about this series, each year LaGuardia would present a city budget that would take care of the needy and poor in NYC and Moses would then swoop in and re-jigger it so that he could get money for his building projects. But their disputes weren't only centered around money. Theirs was a brutal battle of wits and raw power.

This conflict is probably best exemplified in the Astoria Ferry incident of 1936. Shortly before Triborough Bridge was to open, Robert Moses wanted to get rid of the ferry service that took people from Astoria across the East River to Manhattan. These were working people who couldn't afford cars to go over Moses's new bridge and this service was vital to them. LaGuardia ordered that the ferry service continue. So one night, literally minutes after the last ferry had pulled away from the dock on the Manhattan side, a couple of barges pulled up in front of the dock. Bulldozers and pile drivers were unloaded and they began ripping and shredding it to pieces. A furious LaGuardia ordered the police to head down and stop this. Armed cops told the workers to cease and desist immediately. Their reply? "We don't work for you. We work for Mr. Moses." And their work continued without incident.

Robert Moses was so popular, so powerful, his power so unquestioned that not even the Mayor and police department of the greatest city in the world could stop him.

That said, Fiorello LaGuardia's impact on NYC was enormous. He reformed the corrupt Tammany Hall-controlled government and steered the city successfully through the Depression. He was also an out-sized, only-in-New York personality who liked to read comics to children over WNYC radio. But in his last years as Mayor, he was literally dying. After he left office in 1945, he would eat lunch at his favorite downtown club and grumble that Robert Moses had too much power -- and that while he, LaGuardia, could control him (which wasn't true) now no one could (which was true). He died in 1947. Today's he's remembered as NYC's greatest mayor and has an airport, a street, a high school and a college named after him. (This is especially ironic since LaGuardia never graduated from either). If you ever walk down LaGuardia Place, between Houston Street and Washington Square, you can see a life-sized statue of the Little Flower that captures his personality perfectly.

These final lectures were a lot of fun and very informative. It was great to hear Robert Caro bring old New York back to life and I was especially grateful that he autographed my copy of The Power Broker. He also told a funny story about how, when he was writing the book, he couldn't get a hold of Moses's Triborough Authority records which were legally sealed. However, he was told that carbon copies of all these records were stored by the Parks Department under the 79th Street Boat Basin. So Caro and his wife Ina would go there to browse through these carbons. The Parks Department made it clear they didn't like having them there and, whenever the guard went to lunch or stepped out, he would remove the light bulbs so that Caro and Ina would literally be in the dark. So after that they would bring their own light bulbs and screw them in whenever the guards went away.

Carbons and light bulbs -- just one of the ways that great history is unearthed so that the rest of us can better understand the great city that we live in.

A Commie by any other name ... like LaGuardia

As we head into the last two months of the NYC mayor's race, the media and his opponents keep calling Assemblyman and current frontrunner Zohran Mamdani a "communist."

The Republicans, the media and so-called "centrist" Democrats (they're all the same thing really) love calling regular Democrats communists. They've been doing it for decades. Quite frankly, it's boring and unoriginal -- and, if Democrats really were Communists, then the GOP/media/centrist Dems would have suffered the same fate as the Romanovs whenever Clinton or Obama or Biden got into power.

But if Zohran is a Communist, then he's in good company.

I'm currently reading a book about Fiorello LaGuardia, widely regarded as the greatest NYC mayor of all time. And whaddya know -- in reading about the 1933 campaign, the year LaGuardia was elected, the Heart media and Tammany Hall CALLED LAGUARDIA A COMMUNIST! 

Take a look at the excerpt below: "... the little red flower of Communism ..." and so much more. So when you keep hearing this crap about Zohran, just say "Well, they said the same thing about Fiorello and he turned out to be pretty great." 

A Commie by any other name ...

Mayor LaGuardia Reads the Comics

Better known today as the guy the city named an airport and a high school after, LaGuardia - Mayor Fiorello Laguardia, that is, the Little Flower - once ruled this town with imperial power. And what made him such a great politician and an indelible figure was that he knew how to reach the masses. And what better way to do that than with readings comics on the radio? Here he is, from the WNYC Radio archives, entertaining New York's children and teaching them important lessons. Can you imagine Mike or Rudy ever doing something like this? Ha.

Transit Happenings

Well, here's some rare good news out of the MTA. 

As any NYC resident knows, getting to and from LaGuardia airport is only slightly less painful than getting a cavity filled without Novocaine. There's no direct subway route or "air train" like at JFK so either you're doomed to overpaying for a cab or taking one of the very, very, miserably slow buses that go there.

But that's going to change.

This week the MTA announced the creation of three new super-fast buses to LaGuardia under the designation Select Bus Service -- or SBS. They will have limited stops, curbside payment, and will go to and from currently under served parts of the Bronx and Queens. This should cut down the travel time via bus to LaGuardia significantly and be a lot less costly than a cab.

It's not the same as building a subway line but at least it's something.

Talking about the subway, there was a strange happening underground there this week. One Rick Springfield, 1980s rock star one-hit wonder extraordinaire, was see performing his big hit "Jessie's Girl" with a bunch of folks there. Who would have guessed? As silly a song as it is, it's a great song to belt out when loaded at a karaoke bar (not that I would know) and, of course, it's memorialized in the classic movie "Boogie Nights." 

Only in New York, kids. Or possible LA. 

Kevin Smith @ LaGuardia: A Celebrity Sighting and a Thought

On Friday morning I was at LaGuardia airport, waiting outside for my traveling companion to arrive (turned out I was at the wrong terminal, but that's another story) when a big black SUV pulled up and out popped a man in a hockey jersey. 

The driver came out, helped the man in the hockey jersey take his bags out of the trunk, and then the man in the hockey jersey gave the driver a hefty tip, a "bro" handshake, said "Thanks Man", and ambled into the terminal. As I was waiting there, noticing this, I thought, "Is that Kevin Smith, the famous director, who made Clerks and Chasing Amy, two of my favorite movies ever?" 

Turned out it was: besides his recognizable voice and beard, his hockey jersey said "SMITH" on the back so I safely determined that it was the great man himself. 

I was impressed. Here was a big celebrity being kind and respectful to a humble driver when he didn't think or know that anyone else was looking. I've noticed people a lot less successful than Kevin Smith treat such workers like dirt but there was Kevin Smith being a decent guy just because ... well, that's who he is.

As you probably know, there's a huge storm swirling right now about Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul, who was responsible for producing lots of great movies and boosting many careers (turns out Mr. Weinstein isn't such a kind, decent guy). One of those careers he boosted was Kevin Smith's who has express grief at the situation. But I don't believe in guilt by association, people should be judged by their actions alone, and the kind, decent behavior I saw from Mr. Smith, in my opinion, speaks for itself. 

In this age of "Grab 'em" Trump and "toxic masculinity", there's an understandable, cynical urge to look at all famous and powerful men as potential monsters. Many of them doubtless are. So that's why it was so great to see a famous, powerful guy act like a mensch and decent human being -- and it gave me a sliver of hope for humanity.  

Btw, Kevin Smith has a great Twitter which you might enjoy. 

Review: "Times Square" (1980)

The 1980s remains the Golden Age of "teen flicks" -- movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Heathers, Say Anything ... and many others defined what it meant to be a teenager in the Age of Reagan. These movies remain classics for those of us kids raised in that decade, time capsules of youth in a time before the Internet, smartphones, and social media.

My personal favorite is Pump Up the Volume which came out in 1990. The story of an angry, depressed teen who broadcasts a pirate radio show from his bedroom was, in many ways, a perfect ending, a coda, for the '80s teen flicks era. Ironically Pump Up the Volume was directed by Allan Moyle who, in many ways, kicked off the decade of teen flicks ten years earlier with Times Square, his 1980 debut about two teenage runaways in NYC.  

Starring Trini Alvarado and an actress named Robin Johnson (who had a brief career in the '80s before vanishing completely), Times Square is about a rebellious teenager named Nicky (Johnson) who winds up in a mental hospital with another teenager girl named Pamela (Alvarado). Nicky appears to be an orphan but Pamela is the daughter of a wealthy commissioner who is trying to gentrify Times Square. Together they escape the hospital and begin raising hell around the city, calling themselves the Sleaze Sisters. They throw TVs out of windows onto the the street, they steal, they work and perform music in a strip club, and they just act crazy. A nighttime DJ named Johnny LaGuardia, played by the brilliant Tim Curry, follows their exploits on air and discovers that one of them is the same person, Zombie Girl, who used to send him letters about how miserable she was. Johnny tracks them down, as Pamela's father desperately tries to find his daughter as well. Eventually, after several twists and turns, the Sleaze Sisters wind up performing a concert above a marquee in Times Square for their fellow teenage misfits, their rebellion embraced by the whole city. 

Times Square is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a great movie. It's not even really a good one. But it has a great spirit, a lot of life to it. The performances are raw, intense, the characters believable. Johnson is really good, and Alvarado is good as a good girl gone bad. The biggest problem is Tim Curry as the DJ -- he's not in a lot of the movie which is a shame since Curry is such a great actor, and LaGuardia is a compelling character. 

Also, as you might imagine, it's a lot of fun to see a movie set largely on the street of NYC forty years ago. It really was a different city back then -- it looked different, it felt different, it's totally uncognizable from today.

But the angst, the emotion, the rebelliousness of Times Square -- and what it means to be a teenager -- remains quite relevant today. 

Fiorello La Guardia: America's Favorite Mayor

Here's a really good short video bio of 1930s/1940s NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, often considered the greatest mayor the city ever had. It's a good summary of his life, his transformational mayoralty, and his rambuctious, wild personality. 

Here is the complete Mr NYC Laguardia archive and below a discussion about the primary election being held tomorrow for all those aspiring to follow in his footsteps here in the 21st century:

How LaGuardia Made NYC Great

If you want to know more about the legacy of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, go to the the Mr NYC about him here.

Review: “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York”

In 1974, the historian Robert Caro published The Power Broker, his masterful biography of Robert Moses. It won the Pulitzer Prize and, in 1999, was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest works of nonfiction written in the 20th century (it ranked at #92).

So who was Robert Moses? He was, unquestionably, the most important person ever in New York City history. His impact on this town was enormous, immense, reverberating. We are, for all intensive purposes, living in Robert Moses’ NYC. No one has ever held so much power in this town for so long – more than 44 years – and he was never elected to anything.

So what did he do? He was New York’s master builder. He developed the city we live in today. “Robert Moses shaped New York … He built the Major Deegan Expressway, the Van Wyck Expressway, the Sheridan Expressway and the Bruckner Expressway. He built the Gowanus Expressway, the Prospect Expressway, the Whitestone Expressway, the Clearview Expressway and the Throgs Neck Expressway. He built the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Nassau Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway and the Long Island Expressway. He built the Harlem River Drive and the West Side Highway.” He also built the Triborough and Verrazano Bridges as well Jones Beach, Orchard Beach, Jacob Riis Park and other public parks out on Long Island and upstate. He constructed hundreds of playgrounds, tennis courts, boathouses and baseball diamonds. He also built public pools, including the Astoria Park Pool, one of his better accomplishments.

Oh, he built buildings too: housing developments like Stuyvesant Towns and Peter Cooper Village, as well as Co-Op City. He built some other buildings you might know about: Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Shea Stadium, the New York Coliseum (since demolished, the Time Warner Center sits there now). He also built three of Central Park’s notable structures: Tavern-on-the-Green, Wollman Rink and the Delacorte Theater and the 79th Street Boat Basin in Riverside Park. And he ran (badly) the 1964 World’s Fair.

You get the idea. He built everything. “And what Robert Moses built on was as lie.”

The lie was the image Moses cultivated and propagated for five decades: that he was a self-less servant of the people, above politics, only “doing good” for “the masses.” The reality was that he warped the city to serve the rich few and not the poor and middle class many.

The lie was that he was answerable to the Mayors and Governors who appointed him to head dozens of state and city agencies over the years when, in reality, these elected people deferred to Moses. This includes Franklin Roosevelt when he was Governor and President, as well as Fiorello LaGuardia. Moses was a bully supreme. There’s a great scene in the book where, when FDR was governor, Moses stormed into his office and screamed “You’re a liar Mr. Roosevelt!” Can you imagine anyone doing that? Moses called his supposed elected superiors by their first names: he addressed one letter to Mayor Vincent Impellitteri “Dear Vince.” And he called LaGuardia “that dago son of a bitch.” Nasty, nasty man, this master builder was.

So how did he do it? Moses created and ran a public authority called Triborough that raised money through toll-booths and public bonds and that gave Moses nearly a billion dollars that he could hand out (or not) to the public officials he supposedly served. Needless to say, money talks, or in this case, rules. And the unelected, unanswerable Robert Moses ruled this town for nearly half of the 20th century.

And while Moses certainly did some good for the city, the lie was that New York was better off because of Moses rather than the opposite.

“Robert Moses was America’s greatest builder,” Caro writes. “He was the shaper of the greatest city in the New World. But what did he build?” What did he do to construct the city we live in today? “By building his highways, Moses flooded the city with cars. By systematically starving the subways and the suburban commuter railroads, he swelled that flood to city-destroying dimensions.”

He “threw out of their homes 250,000 persons … He tore out the hearts of scores of neighborhoods, communities the size of small cities themselves, communities that had been lively, friendly places to live, the vital parts of the city that made New York a home to its people.” The Cross-Bronx Expressway gutted a pleasant neighborhood called East Tremont, wrecking the Bronx and turning it into a crime-ridden, poverty-stricken borough. The Gowanus Expressway similarly destroyed a lovely middle-class area in Brooklyn, burying it under shadow generating highway. And the public housing Moses built was ugly and depressing. He also built almost no playgrounds and public pools in Harlem or other black neighborhoods. The one public pool he built in Harlem wasn’t even heated – he didn’t think, for some reason, that black people could get cold.

If there are things about New York that drive you crazy today, you can thank Robert Moses for them.

Why aren’t there subway lines that go directly to La Guardia or JFK? Why aren’t there subway lines serving huge parts of Queens? Why can’t you take a subway to Red Hook? Why is there still no 2nd Avenue Subway? Because Moses didn’t believe in public transportation and had contempt for people who needed it and couldn't’t afford cars. From 1933 until 1968, Moses years in power, not one new subway line was built and New Yorkers had to, and still have to, pack themselves like sardines into the subway cars on the old, old tracks. It’s not exactly a secret that our city’s public transportation is inadequate and overcrowded. Moses was so convinced that cars were the future of New York, he even proposed a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have run through and destroyed Soho and Greenwich Village! (Mercifully, that was stopped.) And the irony was that Robert Moses never drove a car a day in his 92 years of life.

In short, Caro writes, Moses “systematically defeated every attempt to create the master plan that might have enabled the city to develop on a rational, logical, unified pattern.” By destroying so many neighborhoods and making so many others inaccessible with little or no public transportation, Moses reduced the number of pleasant areas where New Yorkers can or want to live. That’s why it costs so much to live here today and why New Yorkers are paying so much for so little space.

Needless to say Moses’ legacy is what contributed to the subtitle “The Fall of New York” and, for the last few decades, Mayors and Governors have been trying to undo a lot of the problems he created. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC is basically an attempt to overturn and minimize the Moses mess.

So what about the book itself? The Power Broker is a long, exhausting, infuriating, and brilliant book. Caro is an absolutely masterful writer and the jaw drops when you read about all of the interviews he conducted and all of the documents he browsed through. Caro’s gift is explaining the details and decisions of public policy making and how they affect people’s lives. Ultimately, this book is really not a biography of Moses or a history of New York City or a sociological study of urban planning, but an examination of power (hence the book’s title): Caro brilliantly explains how Moses got power, used it, kept it, and eventually lost it.

Because of its length, The Power Broker is a door stopper and it takes a commitment to read it. It took me over a month! But I highly recommend it if you have any desire to understand how New York City changed and grew in the 20th century.

Making a Modern NYC: Bill De Blasio for Mayor

"Modern" is a word that gets thrown around a lot and yet, when asked to define it, most people would probably be stumped to say what it is exactly. Dictionary.com defines modern as:

1. of or pertaining to present and recent time; not ancient or remote: modern city life.

2.  characteristic of present and recent time; contemporary; not antiquated or obsolete: modern viewpoints.

3. of or pertaining to the historical period following the Middle Ages: modern European history.

4. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of contemporary styles of art, literature, music, etc., that reject traditionally accepted or sanctioned forms and emphasize individual experimentation and sensibility. 

So, basically, something modern is anything that relates to today.

Which begs another question: what makes NYC a modern city? In the past, NYC was the modern city of its times. It was always the city of today -- and tomorrow. But will it always be so?

Before contemplating the future, let's look to the past. This recent segment from WNYC recounted the history of how two men in the 1930s helped to shape modern New York: Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These two titans of their era used the power of government to re-build a decaying city and drastically improve the lives of its citizens. They had a progressive vision: clean and affordable housing, good jobs with safe working conditions, health care, and education. These services were provided and improved in order to empower people in their lives and to help them to contribute to the life of the city. FDR and LaGuardia saw progressive policies not only as compassionate and moral but as smart and necessary -- they helped people help society. Because of these two leaders, NYC emerged from the Great Depression and World War II to be the most powerful city in the most powerful nation on earth -- the very zenith, the very cusp of modernity.  

Now, almost a century later, the city is again looking to the future -- and trying to define its modern identity. 

Increasingly, we've become a city of rich and poor with a dying middle class. If you're rich in this town, times have never been better. But if you're not, they've never been this tough. If you can afford it, there's never been more luxury housing available. If you're can't, there's never been less affordable housing available. Schools are great -- if you can afford good private ones or live in the right neighborhoods. If you don't, you're condemned to failing schools. These have been great times for the rich, lucky and connected -- and terrible for everyone else. 

For Mayor Bloomberg, he has worked very hard to regulate how much soda you drink but not how much you pay in rent. He has tried to make NYC a "luxury product" and not a city for all. Basically, he wants NYC to be Bergdorf Goodmans and, if you can't afford it, you can go shop at Target for all he cares. 

To me, this is an unacceptable future for NYC. 

So what will the future of NYC in the 21st century be like? Is our city going to go the way of Ancien France or Tsarist Russia? Or can we make a change? Can we recapture the same progressive spirit that saved this city almost a century ago?

We can't be a modern, progressive city without investing in our people. We can't have a city of rich and poor, squeezing everyone else out. A brain drain from NYC would be a disaster. As Lena Dunham, creator of the HBO show Girls and a lifelong New Yorker put it: "We can't have our generation's Patti Smith moving to Tampa."

That's why we need to elect Bill De Blasio as our next mayor. He's the best progressive we can elect to fashion a modern New York that closes the gap between rich and poor. He has a simple, straightforward agenda that would go a long way to closing this gap: impose a tax surcharge of .04 to 1% on incomes over half a million dollars, universal pre-K, reform "stop and frisk", support a living wage, and build affordable housing. Sounds like a good plan to me. A 21st century progressive plan that a leading American economist, Jeffrey Sachs, strongly endorses. And believe me, very few people are smarter than him. 

Sounds good to you, right? I would hope so.

But not to some people -- like our current mayor or the 1%. If De Blasio wins the Democratic primary -- as it looks increasingly likely that he will -- it'll be a battle royale between him and the Republican candidate.   

Oh yes, there will be a lot of fear mongering. "Oh no! If we elect De Blasio mayor, it'll be like the 1970s again: high crime, fiscal crises, white flight!" Those arguments are crap: this isn't the 1970s anymore, we have new accounting rules that don't allow a fiscal crises to emerge, and crime has fallen so low that I don't think that a mayor, any mayor, could just somehow make it flare up again. No, the city is facing new a crises: affordability, quality of life, fairness, justice. Without these, NYC can't be a truly modern city.  

The last presidential election showed that American is moving in a more progressive direction. With Obama in the White House, America is moving forward. Does NYC want to be left behind?  

If we are to truly be a modern city, we need to move in a more progressive direction and, for that, we need progressive leadership. For mayor, De Blasio is the way to go.

Studio 360 New York Icons

The great cultural radio show Studio 360 (hosted by Mr NYC interviewee Kurt Anderson) has a recurring segment called American Icons that reviews important works from our nation's culture. These include things like the classic novels The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick, special moments like Jimmy Hendrix's performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, the Harley Davidson motorcycle, even the old TV soap Dallas. The segments look at why these various creations, from different points in American history and in radically different art forms, made a lasting impact on not only American culture but also the American psyche. These American Icon segments are some of my favorite things to listen to.

But wait, 'dere's more!

Recently Studio 360 launched a new New York Icons series that does the same thing for distinctly NYC-centric works. So far: the classic salsa album Siembra, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar", and the musical West Side Story. There are lots of classic movies and books and shows that could qualify as New York Icons, as well as moments like 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World", or Mayor LaGuardia reading the comics on WNYC radio, or Studio 54.

The possibilities are endless.

May I make one suggestion to the creators of the New York Icons series? Maybe you should include blogs. And, if you're including blogs, maybe you could include, oh, I don't know, Mr NYC!

Is a Third Time a Charm?

Apparently Donald Trump, Ed Koch, Peter Vallone and some other city bigwigs want to overturn the law that limits city officeholders to two consecutive four year terms. New York City voters passed this term limits referendum (sponsored by failed Mayoral candidate and Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder in 1993) and, assuming it's not overturned, Mayor Bloomberg will have to leave office at the end of next year.

More Speculation of a Third Term for Mayor Bloomberg

I'm against term limits simply because they're undemocratic -- if a public servant is doing a good job, the people want to keep him or her, and that person wants to remain, then democracy should work its course. That said, it's probably a good idea for Bloomberg to step down in 2010. As good a Mayor as he's been, third terms have usually been disastrous in New York politics. Mayors LaGuardia, Wagner and Koch were good mayors but all had miserable third terms. Running a city like this is exhausting and after almost a decade, fresh leadership and new energy is needed. What do you think?

Public Servants Make the NYC Go 'Round

The legendary Norman Goodman, the county clerk of Manhattan, whose name appeared on between 11 to 12 million jury duty notifications (I got a few back in the day), has died at age 95.  He had an amazing career, serving this city faithfully and diligently for 45 years. 

I remember one time at jury duty, the guy overseeing the pool said, "You are the thin line between civilization and anarchy" (getting a big laugh) -- and Norman Goodman kept that line in existence.

We should obviously appreciate guys like him today when, as I type these words, flights to and from LaGuardia are currently GROUNDED thanks to the government shutdown. The big orange menace in the White House is now making travel in this country impossible because he's shafting government employees like air traffic controllers over his big dumb wall that no one wants and won't work to keep illegal immigration down.

At this point, as Howard Stern said not long ago, I want the wall to get build so I can go and bash my head against it, this situation is just so dumb and frustration. Guys like Norman Goodman, and air traffic controllers, are real public servants -- sadly, their boss (at the moment) is not. 

A new LaGuardia Airport is coming!

Fun City Revisited: Mayor John Lindsay

Forty-five years ago New Yorkers elected a handsome Upper East Side patrician named John Lindsay as Mayor. Using the campaign slogan "He is fresh and everyone else is tired", Lindsay became the first Republican Mayor of NYC since LaGuardia and he promised to be a bright, optimistic new light in our city's brutal political culture.

It didn't quite work out that way.

Lindsay's two terms (1966-1973) were a rough, controversial time in this city's history. It was marked by transit and garbage strikes, rising crime rates, racial disputes, and white flight. Lindsay is accused, either fairly or unfairly, of triggering the financial crises of the 1970s and plunging this city into dark days that it only began to emerge from in the 1990s.

Of course the backdrop of Lindsay's terms were the Vietnam War, de-segregation, and Watergate. It would have been a rough time for anyone to be mayor, often called the country's second hardest job, and Lindsay has been given credit for preventing the city from exploding into riots (unlike LA) and for bringing a great heart to the urban jungle.

It was he who said, in NYC's darkest hours, that this was still a "fun city."

The Lindsay legacy is currently being revisited at an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. Also, there's a new documentary about the Lindsay years currently airing on public television. You can also listen to a debate about Lindsay that was broadcast last week on WNYC.

Go back in time and decide for yourself if this time in history, NYC really was "fun city."

NYC Imposes the First Curfew since 1943

The last time we had a curfew, more than 77 years ago, was also in response to race riots, after a black WWII veteran was killed in Harlem. LaGuardia thought it was a good idea then, and De Blasio thinks its a good idea now.

Plus ca change ...

Mike's Power Grab

I like Mayor Bloomberg. He's done a good job and he's probably the right person to be at the city's helm during this financial crises. Also, I'm against term limits because I don't think it's smart to lame-duck our elected officials or deny the public the right to vote for or against whoever they want.

But ... Mike's desire to do an end-run around the voter ratified term-limits law via a City Council bill is wrong. The voters approved this law twice and it's not right for Mike and these guys to essentially veto the will of the people. It's undemocratic and it's really nothing more than a transparent power grab.

If the term limits law is abolished or amended in this way, there's no doubt that Mike will win a third term. He's popular and super-rich; as a political independent, Democrats and Republicans will have no problem voting for him. But I think that this will really damage Mike's legacy, for three reasons:

1. Mike was for term limits before he was against them. This ploy will damage his credibility and legacy, even if he wins.

2. Mike was elected as an outside the establishment reformer, more interested in serving the public good than in accumulating power. This appears more to be about him keeping power than anything else.

3. There have only be three Mayors who have served three terms -- LaGuardia, Wagner, and Koch. Like Mike, they were very popular during their first two terms. But almost all NYC political pundits agree that there third terms were largely disasters. History has a nasty way of repeating itself.

Tomorrow Mike is supposed to officially announce his intentions to seek a third term. If he gets whipped by a severe backlash, don't say that Mr NYC didn't tell ya so.

Bloomberg Expected to Seek Third Term as Mayor

Third Term No Charm, Historians Say

Election Aftermath

It's really hard to know where to begin in analyzing yesterday's election. There was some good news but mostly it was bad. And trying to make sense of it all will be difficult. But I shall try.

First, the bad news: it was a bummer to see Mayor Bloomberg win a third term that, if the real will of the voters had been respected, he wouldn't have been able to run for. And it was also unsettling that a couple of Republicans out in Queens won City Council races using vile tactics.

Bloomberg proved that lots of money and negative ads work. He so distorted and corrupted the playing field that it was impossible to have an honest debate on the issues. Also, Republicans Dan Halloran and Peter Koo won city council seats by a) in Halloran's case, whipping up anti-Asian sentiment and having his campaign thugs go around intimidating voters, and b) in Koo's case, spreading lies and rumors among Jewish voters that his Democratic opponent Yen Chou was an anti-Semite. These races were close but, still, the typical divisive, dishonest, nasty modus operandi of the Republican party was on full display this campaign season. It's depressing that it worked its evil magic once again. Nauseating. But ultimately the Democrats ran poor campaigns so they have only themselves to blame. Bullies and bad people will be get away with it if the good guys let them.

Second, the good news. John Liu was elected City Comptroller and is now the first Asian American citywide elected official. He won more votes than any other candidate, even Bloomberg. I supported him from the start so I'm glad to see that he won. But the REALLY good news is that Bloomberg margin of victory was an embarrassing five percent. FIVE PERCENT! He spent nearly $100 million on this race against a broke, unknown opponent and that's all he came up with! He spent almost $200 per vote. Wow.

Here's my analysis: a win is a win. Can't spin that. But usually incumbents are re-elected in landslides. In 2005, Bloomberg won with 59% of the vote -- so he suffered an eight percent swing against him this year. That does not bode well for his new term. It's not like he's going to be a new mayor who can win over the people who voted against him (which he did during his first term, after he had won with only 50% of the vote in 2001). The people of NYC today know what kind of Mayor Bloomberg is; that 49% is hardened against him, pissed that he won. Barring another 9/11-like event or something that calls upon him to use his superior skills, that 49% is gone. They won't forgive him for any mistakes he might make in his third, dubiously acquired term. And that 51% that voted for him is vulnerable to getting pissed off he does make any mistakes. They might end up regretting their vote. Then he he'll have no support left.

The result? Mike Bloomberg risks leaving office in four years a despised mayor -- like his third term brethren LaGuardia, Wagner, and Koch did. By the end of their third terms, New Yorkers were totally sick of them. They had outstayed their welcome. Then the city voted for mayors (O'Dwyer, Lindsay, Dinkens) who were totally different from them. And based on the results of last night, that's the direction Bloomberg is going in. His successor could be 180 degrees different from him, elected out of disgust and exhaustion with him -- and that will be a stain on his legacy, a legacy that up until now seemed unassailable.

Now I could be wrong, but I don't think so. And if I'm right, just tell folks that you heard it here first.

So for Mr NYC, election 2009 ends with a sigh, a shrug, and fingers crossed for a better future for his city.

The Man Who Screwed Up the Storm

Meet Stephen Goldsmith, Deputy Mayor of Operations Stephen Goldsmith to you that is. He was given the job by Mayor Bloomberg last year and is a former Mayor of Indianapolis himself.

That's right, one of the Deputy Mayors of this town is probably rooting for the Colts tonight. And he's a Republican. He was an advisor to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and our own Rudy Giuliani. Egads.

So why was this fella Goldsmith hired? Well, don't you see, he's brilliant of course! Yes, Mayor Mike thought (and, I'm sure, still thinks) that Goldsmith is "dynamic" and an "out of the box" thinker and he was tasked with "transforming" city government to make it more ... I don't know what.

It's also his job, as deputy mayor for operations, to make sure that the city government is actually, you know, operating. Well, he did a "heckuva job" when the city government so manifestly failed to operate properly last week during the snowstorm. Apparently this recent transplant was in Washington, DC of all places, spending Christmas with his family. That's right: the man whose job it is to make sure that the city is operating full blast during emergencies was 250 miles away during an emergency!

Too bad this guru of "transformation" couldn't transform himself into an airplane and fly back the day after Christmas to do his job. 

It gets worse. In the year this supposedly brilliant Midwest Republican has been on the job, he has totally failed to learn how the city government or the city itself actually operates. He really is out of his depth and in over his head (sorry for the mixed metaphors). Can you imagine LaGuardia putting someone like Goldsmith in this job? Think not. 

And seriously, Mike, what were you thinking appointing someone who worked for George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaigns? Considering what a disaster that presidency and that campaign turned out to be, should we really be surprised? Anyone who worked for those two maniacs shouldn't be hired for anything, in my opinion. If someone who worked for them applied to a job I was hiring for, I would head for zee hilz! 

So please, Mike, tell Stephen to pack up and go home to Indianapolis. NYC already got David Letterman and Kurt Vonnegut so we don't need him.

Where have you gone, Tammany Hall?

In American politics today, the most common complaint is, why can't politicians get anything done?

Of course, our political system of checks and balances was intentionally set up to make it difficult to govern, lest we slide into tyranny. However, in recent years, it seems like our politicians have gone from governing and legislating into simply engaging in deliberate gridlock. It does "We the people" no good.

The people, of course, are at the heart of any democracy -- because here the people rule. At least, in theory. In practice, of course, people powered government is rough and messy business, much like the people themselves. That is why political parties came into existence, as a way for people and groups with similar interests to organize and claim power. It's always why the engines of political parties, i.e. "machines", became so vital in the 19th and 20th centuries: they helped people claim power and use the government to improve their lives.

A machine works like this: the people who work and vote for or finance the dominate political party in their respective city or state get benefits when the politicians they support get into the power. This can be a job or social services or various government favors. It's very much a transactional, back scratching way of governing. It is the "business" side of politics and government. 

Political machines, of course, have long been derided as sources of corruption since they can warp the machinery and priorities of government and leads to bad policies. Government ceases to function properly when instead of being used an instrument to help the population at large it is used simply to benefit the people who run and support it. However, political machines were not always sources of patronage and corruption. Instead, they were mechanisms to help the poor and dispossessed grab away the levers of government from the rich and connected. 

Here in NYC, from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Tammany Hall was the most powerful and notorious political machine in America. Tammany Hall ran NYC like the Vatican runs the Catholic Church: absolutely. The "bosses" of Tammany, like the infamous Boss Tweed and later people like Carmine DeSapio, would handpick candidates for mayor and other municipal offices and they were almost guarenteed victory on election day. At its height, Tammany's power reached to Albany, with even governors needed the backing of the powerful organization to get elected. But Tammany was not just a cease pool of power and corruption. In its early days, before the government granted social services, it was also a place where poor people and immigrants could go to get a job, food, shelter, even winter clothes. It helped the people at a time when the government and the wealthy didn't, and all it wanted in exchange was a vote. For many New Yorkers at the time, this was a great deal. 

In many ways, Tammany became a victim of its own success and power. By the mid-twentieth century, many of the politicians it had supported, like Governor Al Smith, had instituted social welfare programs in New York State that made the services Tammany used to provide people irrelevant. In the 1930s, the New Deal and the election of Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor made Tammany both irrellevant and, for the first time, politically weak. And, of course, corruption went from the "honest graft" of the 19th century, when politicians and bosses helped the people and themselves, into the vile corruption of Mayor Jimmy Walker -- who spent his days and nights drinking and chasing women while his city fell apart, thanks to the Great Depression and incompetency of City Hall. 

By the 1960s, Tammany Hall was dead. Many said and would say today good riddance. But is the city better off because of it? At its height, Tammany Hall was a strong advocate for New Yorkers who had no other. It truly cared and helped everyone. Today, who does that? Unions? The rich? Ha! And when you see ineffective the city, state and federal governments have became at truly improving the lives of ordinary people, Tammany Hall in its glory years seems truly glorious indeed. 

There is a new book that looks to reexamine the legacy of Tammany Hall. Perhaps, it argues, Tammany Hall has been unfairly condemned. And perhaps the people of our city would do better if another Tammany Hall could rise, a political organization that simply looked out for everyone without regards to wealth or connections. 

P.S. Where was Tammany Hall? It was originally located right off Union Square on East 14th street. The original building was demolished in 1927 but then moved to East 17th.